Dump Truck Cake

Matthew (the birthday boy that loves construction trucks & had a construction birthday party last week) was celebrating his birthday at school today. His mum asked him what sort of cake he wanted since last year, he had a dump truck cake. The kid really loves trucks. How about a garbage truck? Or a fire truck? Nope. Matthew wanted another dump truck!! Hahaha. Birthday boy gets what birthday boy wants.

Dump Truck Cake

I wanted to do a completely different design than the dump truck cake I did for him last year, in a different colour scheme too. I settled on doing a more "grown up" kind of dump truck, taking inspiration from those big yellow and black dump trucks used for mining.

The cake itself is chocolate cake, filled with whipped dark chocolate ganache and iced with chocolate French buttercream. There was minimal carving except for the little window area where the driver sits. That's cake too! For the truck body, I baked 3 big sheet cakes and cut them up in rectangles and stacked them to the right shape. I had to bake this in advance and I successfully froze the cake whole, already filled and iced! So for those of you wondering if you can freeze filled cakes, the answer is yes! (provided that there isn't any fresh fruit or whipped cream in the filling).

back of the cake

view from the top

The cake is fondant decorated. The first thing I made were the panels for the dumper part of the truck, because they needed to dry for a bit before they are stiff enough to be able to stand without bending. I added the stripes on the panels after I put them together. The exhaust pipe has a toothpick running through it so that it can stand upright. The wheels are just round circles of black fondant. I used a flat chopstick to mark the treads all around the tire, and then cut circles of yellow fondant for the middle. Of course, I had to add the birthday boy's name on the license plate. 

Dump truck cake, all filled and ready to go!

Matthew requested for the dump truck to be filled with those yummy chocolate rocks again, so I got him a whole bag this time to put in the dumper! I hope he loves his dump truck birthday cake and has a fun time celebrating with all of his friends at school! Here's a picture of the cake with candles on it that Matthew's mummy sent me.

Happy 3rd Birthday, Matthew!